Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist

Reading the Hollywood Reds

Jeff Smith

Publication Year: 2014

Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist examines the long-term reception of several key American films released during the postwar period, focusing on the two main critical lenses used in the interpretation of these films: propaganda and allegory. Produced in response to the hearings held by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) that resulted in the Hollywood blacklist, these films’ ideological message and rhetorical effectiveness was often muddled by the inherent difficulties in dramatizing villains defined by their thoughts and belief systems rather than their actions. Whereas anti-Communist propaganda films offered explicit political exhortation, allegory was the preferred vehicle for veiled or hidden political comment in many police procedurals, historical films, Westerns, and science fiction films. Jeff Smith examines the way that particular heuristics, such as the mental availability of exemplars and the effects of framing, have encouraged critics to match filmic elements to contemporaneous historical events, persons, and policies. In charting the development of these particular readings, Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist features case studies of many canonical Cold War titles, including The Red Menace, On the Waterfront, The Robe, High Noon, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Any time a book takes as long to write as this one has, one finds that there
are many, many people who provided assistance and help along the way. The
origins of Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist date back to my
time at Washington University in St. Louis. At the outset I especially want...

Introduction: What More Can Be Said about the Hollywood Blacklist?

The notion that many films made between 1948 and 1960 commented on
American politics of the period is so commonplace as to be banal. Several
books analyze this relationship, ranging from Nora Sayre’s pioneering
Running Time: Films of the Cold War, published in 1982, to J. Hoberman’s...

1. A Bifocal View of Hollywood during the Blacklist Period: Film as Propaganda and Allegory

We have seen that a comparatively small but important group of postwar
American films have been interpreted as Hollywood’s response to the Red
Scare. But what produced this consensus view of postwar American cinema?
Along with the appearance of the earliest histories of the blacklist and...

2. I Was a Communist for RKO: Hollywood Anti-Communism and the Problem of Representing Political Beliefs

In the wake of the 1947 hearings conducted in Washington by the House
Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) Hollywood produced several
overtly anti-Communist films. Film historians have offered slightly
different accounts of the number of anti-Communist films made during the...

3. Reds and Blacks: Representing Race in Anti-Communist Films

In a 1953 article for Sight and Sound, critic and future director Karel Reisz
offered a catalog of various features common to anti-Communist films
made in Hollywood. Besides the element of gangsterism, Reisz noted several
other traits, including Communism’s relationship to science, intellectualism...

No issue related to the Hollywood blacklist has been as contentious or as
emotionally charged as the question of “naming names.” Although many
of those blacklisted felt anger toward the studio executives and producers
who callously cast them aside, a special sort of contempt was reserved for...

5. The Cross and the Sickle: Allegorical Representations of the Blacklist in Historical Films

In an essay in Danse Macabre best-selling author Stephen King writes, “If
horror movies have redeeming social merit, it is because of that ability to
form liaisons between the real and unreal—to provide subtexts. And
because of their mass appeal, these subtexts are often culture-wide.”1 For...

6. Roaming the Plains along the “New Frontier”: The Western as Allegory of the Blacklist and the Cold War

As Time magazine’s review of the 1952 western California Conquest notes,
the plot covers a period between 1825 and 1841, when “Mexico-ruled
California was torn by internal strife, and Russia, France, England and the
U.S. were trying to take over the territory.”1 Within this political tumult...

7. Loving the Alien: Science Fiction Cinema as Cold War Allegory

On July 23, 1953, David Platt of the Daily Worker reported on a dispute
between Hollywood studio bosses and J. Cheever Cowdin, new chief of the
U.S. government’s overseas film program. Cowdin urged the studios to
include more anti-Communist content in their work, but, according to...

Conclusion: Old Wounds and the Texas Sharpshooter

While this manuscript was being reviewed, two things occurred that reinforce
the roles of both the Hollywood blacklist and allegorical interpretation
as important parts of contemporary film culture. First, on November
19, 2012, the Hollywood Reporter issued a public apology for its role in the...

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